I've been creating content for multiple platforms and clients for awhile now and I know that
if you don't have a great system to churn out different types of posts and ideas, it
all crumbles super fast.
If you're struggling with keeping up with posting for social media or staying consistent,
you need to watch this video.
Let's do this!
Hi my lovely friends, it's Natalia and welcome back to my channel where I share super actionable
ideas on content creation for entrepreneurs and creatives.
And today, I'm coming to you with a subject I feel is not talked about enough and that's
content creation process.
You see, I believe that in order to stay consistent, you need three things: a well-thought out
strategy, a database of ideas and a system to plan and schedule content.
It's like a tripod and without one of the "legs", this whole thing crumbles pretty fast.
And it's the third leg, the system, that I'm focusing on today.
To make sure you are as efficient as possible, you need to build a process to research, produce
and publish your content.
And I'm going to explain exactly what my process looks like so hopefully, you'll get inspired
and improve your workflow.
In this video, each step is going to have two parts: first, I'll explain what my general
workflow is which applies to each and every piece of content I create and then, I'll explain
how this translates specifically to one of the platforms I'm personally creating for
which is well, Youtube :wink:😉 Each type of content will have slightly different mode
of operation but all creation ultimately follows these general steps.
The tool which I use to manage my content creation process (and frankly, most of my
business operations!) is Notion so you'll see specifically how I use it and what it
looks like for me.
And of course, I want to give credit where credit is due, my process was inspired by
two amazing creators, Ali Abdaal and Thomas Frank.
Thomas's process is very elaborate and complex and I was completely blown away by how much
you can actually do with Notion after watching his video.
And then I watched Ali's video which simplified things a bit for me and I worked off his template
to build a similar workflow for my own Youtube production journey.
It has since changed and developed in different ways because as with anything, it's very important
to make it work for yourself and how you operate.
Nevertheless, both these videos were a huge inspiration to me and I'll link them for you
down in the description box so go ahead and check them out, too!
The first thing I do is to research new content topics in line with my overall content marketing
strategy.
Strong strategy is always the foundation of a great business.
And let's face it, the foundations always need to be solid so if you don't have a strategy
yet, definitely watch this video and download my free workbook which helps you build an
effective strategy yourself.
Once that's done, I know exactly what types of content I need to create in order to serve
my perfect audience so the idea research stage is literally about checking what they currently
are searching for, what problems they have which you can solve and identifying any other
topics that may interest them.
With the example of my Youtube workspace in Notion, I use a kanban board style or a Trello
style, whatever you may call it.
I choose this view style for many other parts of my content marketing like blog posts, newsletters
and have slightly modified systems for other social media platforms.
It represents all of the steps that each video needs to go through which means I have a clear
path and everything is neatly organized instead of being all over the place.
Having this system means I don't ever go "shoot, what do I need to do next" or "have I forgotten
something", and I never scramble for ideas.
And speaking of,
All of my ideas land in this Idea column.
Anytime I have an idea, one of viewers requests a video or asks a question which I can expand
on in a video, I create a new page for it here.
For each new video, I have a template which has all the necessary components and actually
serves as a checklist for this whole process I'm explaining today.
But we'll go through it with each step.
Again, this template is based off of Ali's original template which you can download in
his video.
I've linked mine down below as well if you'd like to use this one that we're working on
here.
When I'm ready to produce a video from my ideas list, I move it to the Go Ahead section.
This is where all my planned videos enter the pipeline.
Once I start researching for a particular video, I can move it to the Research & Outline
column which takes me to step 2.
**STEP 2: OUTLINE**
Now that I have pinpointed a topic and have a general idea of what I'm creating about,
I do research specifically for this video and outline the piece of content.
Whether it's long form content like a blog post or a YouTube video or something shorter
like an Instagram Post, it doesn't matter, I still list key messages I want to convey.
This helps me arrange them in the correct order to form a clear path or a logical conclusion.
Not only does it facilitate the rest of the process for me, but it also makes sure that
my audience gets exactly what they need.
So back in Notion, I want to explain a little bit more how I use templates and that comes
into play already in step 2.
I can click on the video here and we can start off with naming it so let's say I was making
a video on How I Plan and Execute Content for a Month.
Next as you can see, we've got the section in here which shows all the different details
about the video.
You can see the status which represents the column in the board view.
Usually at this point I'll have a rough estimate on the publish date which I can enter in the
box here.
Next, we've got the genre and intention, and this categorization helps me search for previous
videos quickly and see how I can mix up types of videos on my channel.
There's a wee checkbox to tick when I consider a piece of content my cornerstone content
so a highly valuable piece, usually evergreen, containing tons of knowledge and kind of radiating
into other videos and which can be extended upon further in the form of smaller videos.
I also have this Other Content Mentioned section which basically links to the same database,
this Youtube database, and I can just type in anything and this pulls all the different
pages I have within it.
I use it to track any mentions that I had throughout videos and it's particularly helpful
for me when I'm teasing an upcoming video which I can just add on here as well.
And I also include any resources that I share in my video here which links to another database,
I named it Our Resources, and it contains any freebies, any affiliate links, any workbooks,
ebooks, basically any resource that I share with you guys, I enter it here as well.
It means I can link them back easily to each video and I never forget to include the links
in the description box.
I learned the hard way, by the way, so it's a great option that Notion allows you to not
only create a database with so many different variables but also connect multiple databases
and they all get updated when I update one part.
So scrolling down, I have my main page section here which again pulled all the preformatted
sections from my template and I can start researching for this video and start creating
an outline.
This is my inspirations section where I can put any videos or posts that I found very
useful to mention them later and it's a toggle list so it just hides away and doesn't create
too much bulk.
I like keeping things out of the way and hidden so it's more minimalistic.
I have resources so various websites and tools I use to research.
Then the research section where I basically type in anything that comes to mind, it's
sort of a brainstorm section.
So for example, when I was creating my Top 20 Canva Tips video, I had like 60 different
tips in here and I pulled the best ones below into my outline.
I also have a wee to-do list here in case I need to do anything while creating so for
the same Canva video, I needed to create a few designs before to show the tips and I
had this as a task in here.
Coming down, I have a place to brainstorm different title ideas, a section to enter
my tags.
I usually have a few crucial keywords identified beforehand so that I can sprinkle it across
my script.
There's the thumbnail ideas section to come up with what it may look like so I have pointers
for when I'm designing.
And then, there's the script part.
I have another toggle list with different Storytelling resources, Ali explained some
of the ones that he had in his video and I do write with these principles in mind so
I go through it but I'll skip it for now.
Then, I have a basic structure of my script so the hook which is basically this video's
value proposition - I usually share quickly how the viewer is going to benefit from watching
it and try to capture attention from the get go.
Next, there's the intro section where I introduce myself and explain in more detail what the
video is about and introduce the subject.
And then we have the value section which is the meat of the video so to speak.
This is where outline my video drawing from my research section.
I write each main point and have a few bullet points of what I'm intending to say for each
of those.
Then once it's outlined, I'll see whether it's creating a logical, cohesive train of
thought and if I don't feel like it all falls perfectly into place, I play around with it
a bit, changing the order etc.
**STEP 3: CREATE**
And onto the execution which is of course the creation itself.
Here is where I write my post, caption or script, where take photos or choose relevant
images, design graphics or record a video.
The workflow will look a bit different depending on the type of content you're creating but
it still follows the steps I'm laying out in this video.
So say, if I'm producing a post for Instagram, I'll research the subject, outline it, then
flesh out a full caption, choose a photo (because I usually plan photo shoots beforehand) or
take one more spontaneously and then edit it.
I put it all together as a finished piece of content but that doesn't mean that my content
creation process ends here.
For Youtube videos, this creation step has a few different points of course because after
I've got my outline, I need to write a full script, film the video and edit it before
I can confidently say "it's been created".
And again, this is represented in the kanban view with further columns.
So I have the Writing in Progress section for when I'm writing the script, once that's
done, I move the card to the Ready to Film A-Roll section, when it's recorded, it goes
to Ready to Film B-Roll if it's needed for this video.
When everything is recorded, this goes to filmed and can then get picked up and moved
to the Editing section.
**STEP 4: CHECK**
Next, I make sure there are no mistakes, typos, weird unaligned elements in my design or any
missing CTAs in my Instagram post or a Youtube video.
At this stage, also check if I quoted all the relevant sources or credited other creators
who inspired me.
For Youtube videos, I obviously have a few checkpoints so when I write a script I'll
review it checking for this types of mistakes, and then I'll watch the video when it's edited
to see if there aren't any glitches or any uncut footage which I omitted by mistake while
editing.
It all gets done just before I move it to the next section so I never move anything
over to Edited unless it's been checked.
**STEP 5: ENSURE IT FITS THE STRATEGY**
Now, I know I mentioned strategy at the very beginning and that's absolutely right, I start
with the strategy but it doesn't end there.
I specifically included this step in my workflow to make sure that each piece of content I
produce fits the strategy.
The reason for this is simple - very often, you come up with an idea for content and it
works fine with your goals, but once you actually get down to work, get in that creative space,
what you produce may not always be what you intended at the beginning.
This happens especially often when you work within teams and everyone can interpret ideas
differently.
That's why for me it's crucial to always check this finished piece of content is good to
go and checks all the boxes laid out in the strategy.
If a piece of content doesn't represent your brand values, if it's a post format that didn't
resonate with your audience in the past or it goes against your goal, it shouldn't be
approved.
Again, for Youtube, this step takes place after I've written my full script.
This way I know I've not strayed too far from the purpose of this video or the overall goals
of my content marketing.
I make sure my brand values are being represented well and it resonates with my target audience.
If I feel like it's not really up to par, I go back and change the script to make sure
it all fits the strategy.
**STEP 6: OPTIMIZE**
Now that I have given myself a green light to go ahead, I focus on optimizing this piece
for the platform it's going to be published on.
This means improving and optimizing for SEO and choosing a mixture of relevant, high-ranking
keywords, tags or hashtags.
Moreover, I'm making sure all the images are in the right format, have the correct dimensions
and optimum size and have alt text & description (or I'm writing down an alt text for an image
I'm posting on Instagram) etc.
So in Notion, when the video is edited, I change the status to Ready for Publication
and this is when I think about optimization.
I have a checklist in my template below the script so I work off this to do list there.
I upload the video to Youtube and add a description, I expand on the tag list (to go beyond the
most crucial keywords I had written down at the beginning after research), I design the
thumbnail using one of the templates I have created already so it's a quick and easy process,
then I add end screens, cards, choose playlists, add captions.
**STEP 7: PUBLISH**
When everything is optimized, I'm ready to publish my piece of content or schedule it
for later.
Depending on the platform I'm using, there are multiple tools that let me schedule content
ahead of time.
Those are either the tools available natively on Facebook, Pinterest or Wordpress or I use
external scheduling apps like Later or Hootsuite for when I can't schedule directly from the
platform.
For Youtube, after uploading and optimizing the video, I can just schedule it from there
and I tick my do task on the video and move it to the Published section.
**STEP 8: DISTRIBUTE**
Once my content is published, I go ahead and distribute it through my chosen channels of
communication.
Whether it's posting on Instagram Story to let my followers know I have a new blog post,
uploading a snippet of my Youtube video on IGTV or tweeting it, I have to make sure that
I'm doing all I can to actively promote the content I've just produced.
Many people actually forget about this part and simply rely on the algorithms to recommend
their content but the more proactive you are with this, the better.
After all, if you can get more people interested in your content with your actions, it accelerates
the growth and gives you better results in the end.
This step is also reflected in my workflow in Notion and you can see it here to the left.
Again, it's a simple to do list, so I can tick these and that's done.
**STEP 9: PLAN FURTHER MARKETING ACTIVITIES**
This is the last step of my content creation process.
First, I fill in all the remaining details in my content directory which is basically
my Notion workspace - you'll see it in a moment.
Then, I make sure to respond to any comments or emails and engage with my audience and
other creators.
On top of that, I set reminders or tasks to post evergreen content after a particular
time.
It's usually three months, half a year and a year from the time it was published.
For any content that may need updates from time to time, I schedule dates to review it.
This way, I may produce an updated version of a popular blog post or produce another
video after a year to include the newest information.
Of course, I remember to check back regularly and look at my analytics.
If a particular piece of content performs well, I will repurpose it for other platforms
or expand on the subject.
So right after publishing, I update the details in the video with the URL which is useful
if I ever need to link back to it - I just search in Notion instead of scrolling through
my videos on Youtube to find the right one.
The engagement to do list is down here in the right column so I tick these once I'm
done and any other marketing activities get planned specifically in the Content Calendar.
If you'd like me to share how I manage this portion in Notion, let me know in the comment
section!
Check out this playlist to learn more about strategies, social media and content marketing!
Thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video and hopefully it will help you
create content more efficiently.
Hit that like button if you found it helpful - it helps my channel grow as well so I really
appreciate it.
Subscribe for more content creation tips and I'll see you next time.